The Smoke Hunter

by Jacquelyn Benson

  She felt Adam’s hand slide to her arm, gripping her tight.

  “On my mark. One… two… three…”

  Adam pulled her off the stone.

  She felt it rise under her foot, and a high-pitched whistle shrieked through the room.

  The sound was so abrupt it stopped her in her tracks, freezing her in place like a startled animal.

  For a moment the chamber was deadly silent. Then it erupted into a chaos of squealing screams and beating black wings.

  “Down!” Adam shouted, and shoved her toward a tower of stone to her left. Her knees slid in the slime coating the floor, and she scrambled for traction, using both her hands and her feet to claw her way forward. She skated through the filth, coming to a stop under an outcropping. Adam crashed in beside her and they huddled together as leathery wings whipped past them, the air shattered with inhuman screams.

  “What now?” she demanded.

  “I’m open to suggestions,” he shot back as they both flinched away from a particularly low-flying monster.

  He glanced around their hiding place, then pushed his torch into Ellie’s hand.

  “Put them in there for a second,” he ordered, pointing to a deep crack in the rock. Ellie didn’t relish the idea of making their situation any darker than it was already, but obeyed. Adam had the air of a plan about him, and she was fresh out of ideas.

  The cave went dark as the flames were concealed. Adam waited, listening, then suddenly thrust his head out from under the ledge. She resisted the urge to haul him back, and he returned intact a moment later.

  “There’s an opening in the roof. That’s how they get out,” he reported.

  “Can we climb to it?”

  He shook his head. “There’s got to be a trick to this one, just like the others. I’m going to go out and take a look for it. You just… stay put.”

  No—not again.

  In the past few hours, she’d watched Adam risk his life over and over again, each time coming within a hairbreadth of being lost to her for good. Now he was about to head out into a maelstrom of demons. She had seen firsthand what those creatures could do to a man, and here was not just one or two but hundreds of them. It was entirely possible that Adam would leave their precarious shelter and never come back.

  For the first time, Ellie acknowledged how that made her feel—and what that feeling meant.

  It hit her with all the impact of a freight train. What was happening in her heart went beyond a physical attraction, beyond the respect of colleagues, or even friendship. Losing him would mean losing everything that mattered to her.

  Ellie grabbed his shirt, pulling him back under the overhang, and kissed him.

  Everything else melted into static—the screaming of the predators circling around them, the stench of the filth covering her clothes. There was only the glory of touching him resonating through her, setting her buzzing like a tuning fork.

  The kiss broke. The dangers around them came roaring back, and with them an even greater sense of urgency. It drove the words from her mouth before she had time to fear or second-guess. She grabbed his face in her hands, turning it toward her and meeting his eyes with desperation.

  “I love you,” she cried over the racket that surrounded them. She saw his eyes widen with shock, then melt into what looked—rather surprisingly—like relief.

  “Thank God!” he exclaimed.

  She had been bracing herself for disappointment the moment the words had come out of her mouth, for a look of pity or awkwardness. His actual reaction was far more confusing.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she demanded.

  “It means—”

  His explanation was cut off by a cacophony of outraged screams and a thunder of beating wings. The monsters outside had passed so close, Ellie could feel the wind of their passing. Adam pulled her to the farthest reaches of their shelter, putting himself between her and the threat that surrounded them.

  The monsters passed, and he put his hand behind her neck, fingers tangling in her cropped hair. His face inches from her own, he stared into her eyes in the near darkness.

  “How about I get us out of this mess, and then I’ll show you what it means?”

  “Fair enough,” she said weakly.

  “Don’t move,” he ordered. Then he kissed her again, this one quick and urgent, and disappeared into the maelstrom.

  The room was a whirling nightmare. Moving blindly, Adam half dashed, half skated across the floor, keeping as close as possible to the more immobile shadows. He swung around one, a massive stone cliff, and pressed himself against it as the bats buzzed past him.

  In that moment of rest, it came home to him in a giddy rush.

  She loves me.

  Though of course the woman would have to wait until now to reveal it. The circumstances weren’t exactly amenable to his showing her just exactly what he meant to do with the knowledge that his feelings weren’t one-sided.

  Once he got them out of this, he promised himself, he would make it up to her. Thoroughly.

  He forced his attention back to his task. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for. He just knew there must be something, a key to this puzzle like there had been to the others. Pressing himself to the stone, he took a slow, careful look around him.

  There it was—a slight glimmer flashing at him through the darkness. It was barely discernible from where he hid, so he risked another dash, moving across the slick floor, rolling under a swooping great dark thing and coming to another small shelter. From there, he could see clearly what he had only glimpsed before.

  It was a painting, glowing softly in the darkness with an unearthly greenish light. It was like the glow he’d sometimes seen on the beaches of the cays at night, an eerie phosphorescence. The image was of the pale outline of a vaguely familiar figure. He had seen something like it before, carved into temple walls or marking stelae. It looked like Huracan, the Mayan god of wind. In the dark, Adam dodged another swooping monster. It was time to stir things up in here.

  Ellie waited alone in an active and vicious darkness, surrounded by rushing bodies, choked by the stink, and wondering what the devil was taking Adam so long. Every extra minute brought a hundred different visions of what might be happening to him out there in that nightmare of a cave.

  How about I get us out of this mess, and then I’ll show you what it means?

  He’d better, she thought fiercely. She would be damned if she was going to let him slip away from her.

  Then something clattered on the ground before her hiding place.

  Ellie froze, her instincts screaming.

  A great black body flopped awkwardly in front of her. It hovered at the entrance and sniffed.

  Then sniffed again.

  Ellie muttered a silent prayer that she was sufficiently covered in bat slime to disguise her scent. The creature let out a high, piercing screech and took to the air with a heavy flap of its wings. She felt a brief moment of relief.

  Then the bat swooped in shockingly low and fast, coming within a few inches of the ledge.

  It flew at her again, wings slapping against the stone as it reached into the nook with its daggerlike talons.

  Ellie pressed herself back against the rock and kicked out as hard and quick as she could. She felt her boot connect with solid flesh and the bat fell back, flopping awkwardly on the ground before flipping itself over and taking flight once more.

  She rolled over and pulled the torches from their hole in the stone. The flames were still burning brightly. She smiled grimly. Whichever of those monsters came at her next was going to get more than a boot.

  Then the space around her filled with a roaring, and she fell back as she was hit with a fierce gust of wind. The whole chamber was consumed with it, an impossible storm that sent the bats, screaming in protest, out their far skylight and into the night. The torches blew out, leaving her in virtual darkness.

  Ellie waited, trying to hear some sign of Adam’s approach. There wa
s nothing but the roaring wind.

  She crawled from her hiding place, gripping the stone to keep herself upright. Looking up, she could see black winged forms spilling through the star-studded gap in the roof.

  “Bates!”

  A hand gripped her arm, propelling her forward.

  “Time to go,” Adam said.

  “What did you do?” she shouted over the wind as he pulled her along.

  “Found a door marked ‘Storm God’ and opened it,” he replied, and hurried her around a bend. They ducked as a disoriented bat dipped over them, then turned to face another of the maze’s many doors. This one, too, featured a simple latch. Adam opened it and pushed Ellie inside. He shoved it closed behind them as Ellie protested.

  “The torches…”

  There was a heavy clank as the door sealed. She felt frantically for a latch, and failed. There would be no going back—not that she was all that eager to try.

  “Hold on. I’ll get a match. You look for something else we can burn. There might be another basket of torches nearby.”

  Ellie nodded, then realized the gesture was meaningless. While the open roof of the last chamber had offered at least a feeble illumination, the darkness here was so complete, she couldn’t see her hand an inch from her face.

  She heard Adam rustling in the dark; then with a scrape and a hiss, one of his matches flared to life.

  She had just enough time for a comforting view of his filth-streaked face before, with a soft draft like a whisper from the cave itself, the flame blew out.

  “Damn,” Adam muttered. She heard him fumble for another match.

  Scrape, hiss, light—and with a quick and ghostly sigh, it was also extinguished.

  “Bates?” she said.

  “Yeah?” came the reply from the darkness.

  “This is going to sound a bit daft, but did those drafts seem a bit… convenient?” She heard the quaver at the end of her own words, and recognized it as fear.

  “Caves are notorious for drafts.”

  His answer was somewhat less than satisfying.

  “How many matches do you have left?”

  She heard the sliding of the tin again, the wooden scratch, and another flicker of light.

  A rustling breath and it was gone.

  “Not enough,” Adam replied, and, hearing the nuance of his tone in the sense-sharpening blackness, she realized she wasn’t the only one afraid of this darkness.

  24

  FLOWERS DID NOT LIKE walking in the dark. This uncanny place was fearful enough with the comfort of lanterns. With only the occasional burst of lightning filtering down through the trees, the world became a horror of shifting shadows and imagined threats. But Charlie had said they could use no lights. They couldn’t risk being spotted, and so the lamps they carried were closely shuttered.

  Flowers kept his nervousness to himself. He would not let Charlie think him weak. Flowers might be twice his size, but Charlie was the older one. He had always wanted to impress Charlie. He would ignore the way the shadows unnerved him, though it was all he could do not to cry out when one of them detached itself from the others and came soundlessly toward them.

  It was Martin Lavec. The man could move like a panther when he chose, a habit acquired during years of fur trapping both here and back in his native Canada. He came up to the pair and sat down on a block of stone.

  “Found it,” he announced.

  “Far?” Charlie asked.

  Lavec shook his head.

  “Guarded?”

  Lavec smiled, flashing stained teeth. “Not anymore.”

  “Well, then. Let’s move along.” Charlie rose and turned with Lavec toward the deeper part of the ruins. Flowers held back, confused.

  “But the ravine is that way.” He pointed backward.

  “We’re not going to the ravine,” Charlie explained as Lavec snorted and spit.

  “I thought we were leaving,” Flowers said.

  “We are. But if we’re going without any pay from these sons of whores, we’re taking the easy way,” Lavec retorted.

  “There’s an easy way?” Something in Lavec’s tone and the wicked glint in his eye was making Flowers’s stomach twist.

  He felt Charlie’s hand clap onto his shoulder.

  “You’re going to love it,” he asserted.

  They turned to walk once more, and the silence of the night was shattered with a chorus of screams. They were high-pitched, sharp, and utterly inhuman, rising from the central courtyard.

  They echoed among the tree trunks, then bounced distantly off the surrounding mountains before fading to a tense silence.

  “What was that?” Lavec hissed.

  Charlie silenced him with a gesture, crouching low in the bush. Flowers followed his example, a primal terror having replaced his unease.

  That noise…

  Silently, cautiously, Charlie crawled forward toward the source of the unearthly screeching. Only his even greater fear of being left behind pressed Flowers to follow.

  They reached the edge of the brush at a ruined wall that bordered the courtyard. They could see the whole of it and, at the far end, the dwindling fires of the camp.

  The wind whipped past them, wet and cold. Flowers looked up as lightning cracked across the sky.

  Then he saw them.

  Dark shapes, massive, wheeling through the air on black wings. He knew what they were, heard their name in his mind in the guttural tones of a dying man.

  Los ángeles de la muerte.

  The monsters screamed at another sudden flash of light, then swooped, diving at the figures huddled in the camp.

  More screams filled the air—screams of men. Another spike of lightning made the slaughter stark, the black beasts tearing at the bodies of the bearers.

  Then the rain began.

  It poured out of the sky, drenching them in seconds. The ground beneath Flowers’s feet turned instantly to mud, tiny rivers running around his boots.

  Charlie slid back behind the ruin, Flowers and Lavec following. He looked to the Québécois, his face pale and sober through the downpour.

  “How far was it?”

  “Sixty yards, due east,” Lavec replied.

  “We’ll get things started.” He met Lavec’s gaze meaningfully.

  “I’ll find guns,” the other man replied, and slipped away into the storm.

  The tomb of kings, the sacred heart of the city: Dawson could see all of it now.

  They had brought in bright, high-powered kerosene lamps, and their glow illuminated all but the most narrow and shadowy of corners.

  The space clattered with activity. Flash powder exploded, the camera recording all of the gruesome images on the walls. Behind him, workers were carefully packing the precious books into straw-filled crates. Meanwhile, another four men by his feet were crafting a peculiar crate of their own. Very wide and flat, it would be just the size to accommodate the artifact and keep it protected on the long journey back to England.

  Jacobs stood beside him. He was looking down at the flat, shining surface of the mirror.

  “Are you certain that’s it?”

  Dawson’s hackles rose. What else could it be? An object of such ritual significance that the tombs of the kings were arranged around it—did Jacobs think perhaps some other trinket might be the one they were looking for? And who was Jacobs to question Dawson’s conclusions anyway? Nothing more than a hired thug. A very clever thug, certainly. An extremely clever, very capable thug. But he was not a tenured professor of ancient history.

  “This is it,” he replied in cold, clipped tones. Jacobs accepted the response without so much as a nod and turned his dark gaze to the men packing the books. He frowned.

  “We’ll only be taking back what’s absolutely essential.”

  Dawson felt another flare of rage. As if a treasure trove of books from an unknown culture were of anything but the most profound importance. But Dawson suspected there was only one set of terms by which Jacobs measured �
�essential.”

  “Those very well may contain vital information about the artifact.”

  “Fine,” Jacobs allowed after a moment’s consideration. He turned to the four working on the floor beside the mirror. “Make certain that crate is reinforced.”

  One of Jacobs’s armed men stumbled down the ramp. He was soaked through, and Dawson realized that aboveground, the storm that had been threatening since they arrived must finally have broken.

  His face was white with fear.

  “There are devils coming out of the sky!” he called.

  Jacobs pulled his pistol from its holster, then pointed to a pair of men boxing books near the entrance to the tomb.

  “You two, pick those up.” He gestured to a set of rifles on the ground nearby. “Anything tries to come through this door, shoot it,” he ordered flatly, then stalked through the exit.

  The darkness was perfect. Ellie had been in dark places before—the glade around a country house on a moonless night, a lampless room with heavy velvet curtains. But even then, the gloom had not been impenetrable. There had been forms, variations. If she had let her eyes adjust long enough, she could have seen her way to a door or window.

  This was different. This was blindness. She could wave her own hand back and forth in front of her face and catch no glimpse of it. All was ink, thick and impenetrable. It filled her with raw fear. She had to fight the urge to demand that Adam light another match, just to know for a moment that a world still surrounded them, that they had not fallen into some unspeakable void.

  “Where are we?” she asked instead.

  “I don’t know,” Adam replied, his voice eerily disembodied. “Some kind of room of eternal night, I’m guessing.”

  “Should we try another match?”

  There was a pause.

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  Adam’s words stirred the fear in her again. The air around them now was as still as a grave. The drafts that had extinguished the matches they had lit before had been convenient and abrupt.